


Don't Be Disappointed, Don't Let Your Heart Break

by bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies



Series: Gold In The Cracks [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Aromantic Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Other, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Relationship, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, bit more heavy on the angst side in this installment, well pre-QPR but same concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 08:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13677822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies/pseuds/bouquetofwhoopsiedaisies
Summary: The world seems to stop for a few moments when Lance yanks down Pidge’s sleeve and sees their hand.  No one moves, even the air seems to be frozen as cold fear spikes through their gut.  Lance’s eyes lock onto their hand, covered in blue ink from his pen, for a heartstopping moment before they slowly raise to Pidge’s face.“Pidge…” his voice is soft with disbelief.  Pidge doesn’t look at him, unable to meet his eyes.“I don’t want to talk about it.”  Pidge’s voice sounds hollow, even to their own ears.(Lance finds out he and Pidge are soulmates.  Pidge's feelings about it are complicated.  Takes place during Kintsugi's chapter 2)





	Don't Be Disappointed, Don't Let Your Heart Break

**Author's Note:**

> You probably should read Kintsugi to fully understand this, but in case you’re not interested, a rough summary of it is that it’s an AU where whatever marks you make on your body, the same appear on your soulmate’s, and Pidge and Lance are soulmates but Pidge has been keeping their identity a secret from Lance for years. If you’re interested in seeing what happens after this fic, check out Kintsugi, even though Pidgance is the secondary -- but still pretty prominent -- ship to that (this piece is plopped in the middle of that fic’s chapter 2)
> 
> Title comes from the song "Wings" by Casey Lee Williams. Not a songfic, but I thought it fit the story well.

The world seems to stop for a few moments when Lance yanks down Pidge’s sleeve and sees their hand.  No one moves, even the air seems to be frozen as cold fear spikes through their gut.  Lance’s eyes lock onto their hand, covered in blue ink from his pen, for a heartstopping moment before they slowly raise to Pidge’s face.  

“Pidge…” his voice is soft with disbelief.  Pidge doesn’t look at him, unable to meet his eyes.  

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  Pidge’s voice sounds hollow, even to their own ears.  They tug their hand out of his grip and pick up their lunchbox, a voice in their head screaming at them to run, get away from this.  They listen to it and head for the cafeteria doors as quickly as they can, nearly bowling over a freshman who didn’t step out of the way fast enough.   _ Don’t follow me, please don’t follow me _ … 

“Pidge!”  Lance isn’t as good at listening Pidge’s thoughts as Pidge themselves is, apparently.  They break into a run down the hallway, and they can hear him behind them, the echo of his converse sneakers slapping against the dirty tile of the school floor following them.  “Pidge, please!  Wait!”  

They skid around a corner, hoping to lose him, but find themselves in a dead end (unless they want to trigger the emergency exit alarm, but they really don’t feel like getting sent to the Vice Principal’s office on top of everything else today).  

Pidge hears Lance come to a stop behind them, and they’re trapped.  They turn around and glare at him through the tears that are starting to prick at their eyes.  “What do you want?”  They bite the words out at him harshly.

“I want to talk about this.”  He says, reaching out for them.

“I don’t.”  They retort, taking a step back, out of his reach.  

“Pidge, please, this is important--”

“No, it’s not.”  Pidge cuts him off.  “It’s not that big a deal.  Soulmates aren’t the end-all-be-all of life, okay?  The whole concept is stupid; I’m my own person, I’m not lacking some vital part of myself that needs to be filled with a soulmate, and I am not just a piece to be used to fill some hole in someone else’s life.  All this crap about soulmates ‘completing’ each other is bullshit.”

Lance lets his hand drop to his side.  “You… you really hate the idea of soulmates that much?”  He asks, his voice quiet.  

“An entire concept that completely invalidates my orientation?” Pidge says scathingly.  “Yeah, I’d say ‘hate’ suffices.”  

“What do you mean?”  Lance asks.  

“You don’t want to hear about it.”  Pidge looks away.

“I do, actually.”  Lance says.  “You were my friend before I knew you were my soulmate.  I care about my friends.  This doesn’t change that.”  

Pidge watches him carefully, weighing their options.  They let out a heavy sigh.  “I’m aro-ace.  Aromantic, asexual.  Agender, too, you know, so I’m the big triple-A of invisible orientations.”  They lean against the wall of lockers, looking down at their orange high-tops as they go on.  “I don’t experience attraction of any kind toward anyone, not sexual or romantic.  Some aro-ace people are different, but to me… there doesn’t seem to be much point to relationships.  They don’t interest me at all.  I mean, once you take out the romantic stuff, what’s left?  But because of  _ this _ ,” they hold up their hand, still covered in ink from Lance’s pen.  “Because of this stupid link, what I want doesn’t matter.  Who I  _ am  _ doesn’t matter.  I’ve always known that as soon as the soulmate thing happened, as soon as they realized who I was, my romantic orientation would be invalid; suddenly I’m a soulmate and I have a soulmate and they’re stuck with me and I’m stuck having to be in a relationship that I never asked to be in, just because someone else in the world can write on my skin.  That’s not  _ fair _ , Lance.  I don’t want to be roped into something like that based on something so arbitrary.  And it’s not fair to them-- it’s not fair to  _ you _ , either.”  They push their fingers through their hair, biting their lip for a moment before going on.  “I can’t be a good soulmate.  I can’t do the things people do in relationships.  I don’t have any interest in holding hands or kissing or doing gushy romantic stuff like that.  And look at you!” They wave a hand at him.  “You’re the most over-the-top romantic guy out there.  You deserve someone who will appreciate that kind of stuff and who will reciprocate it.”  They look down, blinking away tears.  “You deserve so much more than I can give you.  You deserve so much more than me.”   

“But… I don’t  _ want  _ anyone else,” Lance says quietly.  “I like  _ you _ , Pidge.”

Their head snaps up, anger coursing through them.  “No, you don’t.  You’re just saying that because of the soulmate thing.  This is exactly why I never told you, because I knew you’d act like this.”

“You… you knew?”  He stares at them, taken aback.

“Yes, I knew.”  Pidge tells him.  “I’ve known since second semester of freshman year, algebra class, when we traded quizzes to grade them and yours had my little alien face I draw doodled all over the margins.”  

Lance’s eyes widen.  “Three years… you knew for three years and you didn’t say anything?”

“Because I knew you would get all weird about it!”  Pidge says defensively.  “I  _ liked  _ being friends with you!  I didn’t want to lose that!”  Lance was sometimes annoying and a little impulsive, but he was smart and witty and funny and kind… he had very quickly become one of Pidge’s best friends, and they couldn’t bear the thought of having all of that taken away.  That was the fear they felt every time the written conversations they had late at night were interrupted by Lance asking if it was okay if he learned their name yet.  That was why they had asked him not to write during school where he might see it, why they avoided mentioning anything about themselves that might have given them away.  They have worked so hard to keep this a secret because they’ve been dreading this moment, when he would find out and try to change what the two of them have.  Now that moment is here, and Pidge feels like their world is ending.  Tears spring to their eyes, unbidden and unwelcome, and they push the heels of their hands into them to try and press them back in.

“We don’t have to lose it!”  Lance says.  “Pidge, we could have… there were so many years we could have been more--”

“I don’t  _ want  _ to be more!”  Pidge raises their voice, taking their hands away from their eyes to glare at him through the tears.  “I don’t want to be ‘more than friends’, I don’t want to be in a relationship, and I don’t want you to be stuck in a dead-end relationship with me out of some deluded sense of obligation!  I want you to date whoever you want, fall in love with whoever you want… I just want you to be  _ happy _ , and you can’t be happy with me!”  

Lance stares at them, stunned, with tears in his own eyes.  Suddenly the school bell rings over the loudspeaker system, signalling the end of the lunch period.  Pidge scrubs at their eyes furiously as the sound of chattering students returning from lunch fills the hall, and they walk past Lance without looking at him.  

~~~

Pidge hides for the rest of the passing period in the girls’ restroom, somewhere they almost never go.  They tend to avoid having to go to the bathroom during the school day, because using the girls’ restroom feels weird since they aren’t a girl, but they’re also not a boy and using the boys’ restroom would get them sent to the Vice Principal’s office (gender is stupid, they think).  But today, they need to escape to the one place Lance can’t follow them, and they also need to splash some cold water on their face to get rid of the tears.  Those stupid, stupid tears… Pidge blames it on too many late nights this week; they refuse to believe they’re in here crying over a boy like a lovestruck teen in a Lifetime movie.  

They manage to pull themselves together and get rid of the worst of the redness by the time they need to run to their next class, but their eyes are still puffy as they take their seat.  The girl next to them asks “are you okay?” and they mutter something about being fine, just tired, and open up their English book to a random page to try and lose themselves in Hemingway’s blunt realism for a while.  

They’re glad they don’t have a class with Lance this afternoon, because they don’t think they would be able to handle seeing him right now.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to stop him, as a couple class periods later, Pidge finds a message from him on the back of their hand.  「 _ Hey _ 」.

Pidge frowns and switches out their note-taking pencil for an ink pen to write back.  「 _ I thought I told you not to write to me during school hours _ 」.  They pull their sweatshirt sleeve down over their hand and pick up their pencil again, copying the teacher’s notes on the board.  They tell themselves they aren’t going to look at their hand again, but halfway through the period, their curiosity gets the better of them and they peek.  

「 _ Can we meet after school and talk?  Please? _ 」 __

Pidge worries their lip with their teeth.  They don’t want to talk about this.  They’re the kind of person who prefers to bottle things up in hopes that if they don’t talk about it, the problem will just go away on its own.  Lance is the kind of person who likes to talk things out until he finds a solution.  He did that when he found out neither Pidge nor Hunk was planning on attending the homecoming dance -- Pidge because they wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress, and Hunk because he didn’t like the big crowds and strobe lights that the dance had last time he tried going -- and he insisted on talking about what they didn’t like about it specifically and then planned an alternative Star Wars movie marathon night for the three of them instead that involved none of those things.  Pidge should have known he would have the same reaction to this, too.  They know he won’t rest until they relented and let him talk this out, even if it was painful.  Better to just get it over with, like ripping off a bandaid.  

「 _ Fine _ 」, they write back.  「 _ Meet at the bleachers by the football field after school _ 」.  If they had to do this, they sure as hell weren’t doing it surrounded by people if Lance decided to pounce on them at their locker or just outside the school.  They wait until they’re sure he has seen it and writes back his  _ okay _ before rubbing some hand sanitizer from the little bottle in their backpack over the back of their hand, erasing the words.

~~~

Pidge feels jumpy and on-edge for the rest of the day.  When the final bell rings, they shove their books into their backpack, slip their coat on, and hurry out the side door to avoid running into Hunk, Keith, or worse, Lance himself.  They trek across the muddy PE field and make their way over to the football field.  Usually the field would be crawling with band kids getting ready for marching practice, but the season is already over, so it is empty.  Climbing up the bleachers, they take a seat in the middle row off to one side, leaning against the chain link fence while they wait.  They tug the sleeves of their jacket over their hands and hunch their shoulders against the chilly air.  It’s cold; winter is finally starting to make an appearance, even though there likely won’t be snow for another few weeks.  Instead, they’re just left with bitterly-cold winds that rustle through brown, dry grass and bare, leafless tree branches.  What a desolate picture, they think.  How fitting.  

They hear the metallic  _ thunk, thunk, thunk  _ of shoes on the bleachers and take a deep breath, steeling themselves as Lance makes his way up to where they are.  Time to rip the bandaid off.  

Lance sits down on the same row of bleachers, a couple of feet in between the two of them.  For a few moments, neither of them say anything.  Pidge doesn’t have anything to say -- they pretty much got it all out of their system during the confrontation at lunch -- and Lance seems to be getting his thoughts together. 

“I’m sorry.”  When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet.  The words surprise Pidge enough that they raise their eyes to look at him.  He’s bent over, elbows resting on the tops of his thighs, eyes trained on his shoes.  “I know you don’t want a soulmate, and I understand why you never said anything.  But now that this is out in the open, I think we need to talk about it.  I don’t want this to mean the end of our friendship.”  

Pidge doesn’t either, but they don’t see a way around it.  People grow up, meet their soulmates, and start dating.  That’s just the way the world works.  People like Pidge either have to give up their own wishes to appease their soulmate’s needs, or live their lives wracked with guilt knowing that they were preventing their soulmate from being happy.  

“You said before that I only like you because of the soulmate thing.”  Lance goes on.  “That’s not true.  You’ve been my friend for years, and I care about my friends.  Really deeply, too.  You, Hunk, even Keith, even though sometimes he’s kind of an asshole.”  He chuckles a little to himself, and it eases the pained lines in his face just a little bit.  “Some languages have different words for different kinds of love, and I wish we had something like that, because it would make this easier to explain.  The love I feel for my family, the love I feel for my friends, the love I think of when I think of a romantic relationship… they’re all different kinds of love, but none are more or less important than the other kinds.  It’s like,” he pauses and turns his body a bit, stretching a leg out to place his foot next to Pidge’s.  “Your shoes are orange, and mine are gray.  They’re different colors, and they look different, but they’re both shoes.  They are shoes before all their differences.  Love is love -- caring deeply about someone -- before the differences of platonic, romantic, familial...  Does that make sense?”  

Pidge looks down at their feet, the two colors of shoes resting side by side.  “I guess so.”  They admit.  

Lance doesn’t draw his foot back, keeping it pressed against Pidge’s.  They don’t move their foot away either.  “You’re important to me, Pidge.  You always have been.  And maybe this is selfish of me, but I want to stay in your life in some way, in whatever way you’ll have me.  I want to stay friends.  I want to talk to you at school and hang out with you on weekends and watch movies and stargaze with you while you look for UFOs on warm summer nights like we have for the past few years.  I don’t want you to cut me out of your life because of this soulmate thing, but if that’s what you want… then I’ll do it.  Because I want  _ you  _ to be happy, more than anything.”  

Pidge bites their lip, willing the stupid tears that are starting to prick at their eyes to go away.  “I want that, too.  I want you to be happy.  That’s all I want.”  

Lance looks relieved.  “If we both want the other to be happy, and if what makes us happy is to just stay friends, then that’s all we need to do.  We don’t need to make this any more or less than that, just because of what other people usually do.  Is that okay?” 

“Yeah.”  Pidge lets themselves smile a bit.   

“We’re still friends?”  Lance clarifies.  

“Yeah,” Pidge nods, wiping at their eyes with their sleeve.

“...Do you need a hug?”  Lance asks carefully, as though he’s afraid they’ll say no or spontaneously burst out the waterworks.  Both options seem like very real possibilities.  

Pidge thinks about it for a few moments and nods again.  “Yeah…” 

Lance scoots closer and folds them into his arms.  It’s not uncommon for Lance to hug one of his friends; he’s a very tactile person, who naturally pats people on the back or links arms or slings an arm over his friends’ shoulders.  Keith is the only one he avoids it with, because even after getting used to talking with them, he still visibly jumps and looks like a startled cat whenever anyone touches him, yet when questioned he refuses to talk about it.  Lance seems to understand that whatever it is, it’s something Keith isn’t willing to share, so he just does what he can to not make him uncomfortable.  When they first met, Pidge had sort of suspected Lance and Hunk might be together because of how touchy-feely they were, but eventually figured out that was just how Lance was with people.    

Lance rubs their back through their coat, the motion soothing the tension Pidge had been feeling since lunch.  They’re intensely relieved that this doesn’t feel any different from past hugs; he doesn’t let his hands slip down to their waist or try to kiss them, or pull any other stunts straight out of a made-for-tv movie.  It feels as easy as it always has, and Pidge thinks that maybe this will work out okay.

They take a deep breath and pull back from the hug, wiping the drying tears away from the corners of their eyes with their sleeve.  Lance looks down at them, concerned.  “You okay now?”  

“Yeah,” Pidge nods and manages a wobbly smile, which he returns with one of his own.  He stands up and offers his hand to help them to their feet.  There’s a moment where Pidge thinks he might keep holding hands with them, but he just gives their hand one last squeeze before letting go, and the two of them walk back down the bleachers.          

**Author's Note:**

> It’s valentine's day? Here have angst and platonic fluff.
> 
> As much as I am a sucker for soulmate AUs, I am also a sucker for ace, aro, and aro-ace headcanons (and all the gray/demi variations). Which got me thinking, what would it be like, to be any of those orientations in a world where it’s just assumed that everyone gets together with their soulmate? It’s not something that I’ve seen talked about in soulmate AUs very often, if at all, so I decided to take a shot at it.
> 
> In case it wasn’t clear from this fic, and spoiler alert for my other fic in the same AU, but Pidge and Lance don’t end up in a romantic relationship that negates Pidge’s aro-ace orientation. Sometimes platonic love is all you need.


End file.
